Forgiveness Is A Human Concept And I'm A Ghost
by labass
Summary: We all have stories we won't ever tell. This is one of Maddies. One-Shot


Disclaimer: I own nothing: all characters accredited to Butch Hartman

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AN: If this seems familiar it's because this is a rewrite of an old fic of mine.

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Please follow, favorite and review! Enjoy!

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Life is not what it's supposed to be. It's what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.  
-Virginia Satir

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Vlad's lab has always made him uncomfortable; so clean and neat he almost feels like he should take off his shoes or something. All sleek chrome and fluorescent lighting. The exact opposite of his parent lab at home; that being a place of organized chaos and never quite knowing what that spill you stepped in really was. Especially Danny, Danny really did not want to know which ghost that stain used to be. He might lose it if he does.

Danny sighs and looks around at the many shelves, cupboards, and pieces of equipment he has to pack up and break down. He still doesn't understand why exactly fruit loop decided that for some inexplicable reason to name him as the sole beneficiary in his will. Apparently, when you've been "lost to space" for over a year your attorneys can finally declare you legally dead.

Danny knows he's not, he learned a long time ago that it's almost impossible to die in your ghost form. He winces at the thought. Knowing Vlad is in for a slow cruel descent into madness and … what would he even call it? Full death?

Idly Danny wonders whether he'll cross over to wherever most people who don't become ghosts end up. Or will he just become a full ghost? His lips thin at the morbid thoughts. He shakes his head as though that will dispel it.

He stands there at the doorway not moving. Still feeling as though he's a child who is sneaking into somewhere he knows he is not supposed to be. It feels like at any moment Vlad is going to sneak up behind him with an ectoblast and say something like " Finally decided to join me little badger?" or " WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY LAB?!"

Danny takes one step forward, then another and another. He lets out the breath he didn't realize he had been holding and give a bitter little chuckle. It seems like even when Vlad might as well be a million miles away, he still has a hold over him.

Danny doesn't want to do this, doesn't want to look through every sick plan and brilliantly designed machine Vlad has here, but he has to. He sighs, he's the only one he trusts to go through Vlad's lab. He doesn't trust his parents enough to not to try to appropriate Vlad's technology or kill themselves in the process, and clockwork _knows_ that there is no timeline where Danny will ever let the guys in white come within one hundred miles of this place.

Plus, Danny thinks, he wouldn't put it past Vlad to install Jack Fenton specific boobie traps.

* * *

Hours later and there's been way too much sorting and boxing and flat out destroying some things that he can see no other purpose for than torture.

Yet there are some things that he can only recognize as pure brilliance despite the insane man that built them. ( Danny quietly makes note that most of the best designs are some of the oldest ones)

Designs he knows could take his parents to work to a level they would never reach on there own. Now Danny doesn't think his parents were stupid per say, but he does think few people in the world could match Vlad in intelligence and that his parents aren't one of them. So Danny packs everything up with the plan to send all of it to the far frozen. He knows he need only ask and Frostbite will make sure that none of this ever sees the light of day again.

He comes across yet _another_ secret compartment in the back of one of the cupboards. Seriously the number of hidden compartments in this lab was ridiculous. Danny has taken to just phasing his head through even wall he sees at this point. This one is about the size of the cupboard it's hidden in. He removes the false back and gives a tired sigh. He knows at this rate it's going to take him over a week to pack all this up, and seriously Vlad had more hidden compartments at this point than he did visible ones. So who knows really how much stuff he hasn't found yet.

He pauses, this compartment looks as though it might have been forgotten about; which he wouldn't be surprised about considering how many there are.

There are no cobwebs, it not quite as untouched as that, plus Vlad's lab had airtight sealed doors so he doesn't see how any insects would even get in, but a thick layer of dust surprises him momentarily.

The only thing this compartment contains is a cardboard box, just slightly larger than your average shoebox under the layers of dust. he blows it all away with one breath, the lung capacity his ghostly wail gives him is useful sometimes, he can hold his breath for over seven minutes before even feeling uncomfortable.

( he won't lie to himself and say that those seven minutes weren't some of the longest he's ever experienced. He was terrified that he was really truly dead enough that he didn't need to breathe anymore. That he was just a human-looking shell of a dead thing.)

He opens the box and finds it full of loose papers and envelopes stacked neatly. They have various looking sizes and age. His curiosity is peaked so he sorts them through not really reading it. He glances at the envelopes and notices there all dated and put in order according to the date written on them.

He grabs the oldest envelope and set the rest of the stack to the side. He's tired so he sits on the floor and cracks the seal, he freezes. The address on the front of this envelope is _his_. Oh great, Danny thinks; this is probably an old love letter to his mom or something, gross.

He rips the letter out with haste and begins reading.

* * *

Maddie,

It's been a few weeks since I saw you all last, and I can't say I've forgiven you, or even settled my own feelings about the matter. I truly don't know when- or if - I ever will.

How do you settle the feeling of loss in just two weeks, because that's what I feel Maddie - loss- almost grief in a sense.

I spoke little to you in the hours-days- following the phone call and what I did manage to articulate through the bombardment of information wasn't quite what I think now. Now that I have had the time and the space to think on the matter, observe it from every angle; the scientist in me coming out I suppose.

He is so bright Maddie, in every sense. Smart and happy and he lights up a room Maddie, he is pure and good and innocent and a child.

What good could I possibly do a child, Maddie? What kind of example do I have to follow?

Yet I find myself replaying that too short interaction in my mind and wondering, doubting myself in a way, I've never been so very unsure of anything in all my life.

He loves you both and is happy; that much I can see.

I very much don't want to be selfish in this Maddie and I can think of no scenario involving me that turns out best.

Yet my dreams are filled with a blue-eyed little boy that calls me papa and I'm terrified.

You sent me the first of what is sure to be a series of painful, bittersweet pictures. He's smiling and holding a solar system model proudly.

I ponder now where that fascination for the stars came from, I suppose in a way it came from us, we both study that which is by all accounts unknown and unreachable.

I'm falling in love Maddie, with the little boy in these pictures. With a bright child with my hair and eyes and your face. He's a painful reminder of what could have been in some ways. I sit here in awe of this everyday miracle that we have created and want to cry like a child for the son that I know I will never allow myself to know.

Yet, Maddie, I wonder about the day when -if- he ever asks. If the day should come where he looks into the mirror and still wonders why all he sees is other. Because let us be honest here, there will come a day where he grows up and realized that nothing bout him resembles Jack. After all, Jack and I are about as similar in appearance as night and day.

So if he asks you again when he's older, why he doesn't look very much like either of you and if he's ready. I selfishly hope you will tell him the truth. So that one day I will have the hope of forming a relationship with the man my son will one day be.

So if he asks you, tell him that from the moment I knew he existed he was wanted, that he was loved; never let him doubt that Maddie. That everything I did, everything I and you hid was so that he could grow up loved and happy with two people who love him more than their own life; as I know you both do.

Never let him doubt that Maddie, that he was wanted, despite the unfavorable circumstances, despite the fact that he will never know me as anything more than his distant godfather, make sure he knows how much I wanted to be selfish. How much I wanted him.

All my love,

Vlad Masters

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A chorus of _lieslieslies_, hisses through his mind, but the words on this paper made way too much sense.

It was locked away in a secret compartment that was never meant to be found, and Vlad's descent into madness didn't start until much later in life according to Clockwork.

His mind whirls for a different explanation than the one staring him in the face, but as much as he tries, he can't come up with another explanation; and as Clockworks says it's often the things right in front of us we don't, or won't, see.

He gets up and sits in one of the expensive cushy rolling chairs, plops the rest of the letters on the desk, and settles in for the long haul.

* * *

Hours later Danny is drained, feeling as though someone had taken a melon baller and hollowed out his insides.

He flies home mechanically, almost as if someone else is doing the flying, and he's just watching. It's a common enough feeling these days anyway and is dead useful as one of his many unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Jazz would call it disassociating, he calls it surviving.

He flies home numb to his feelings, unfortunately, he knows he won't stay that way long. About ten minutes from home the tears come and he can't stop them, he doesn't want them to.

He walks in the door and closes it so softly and walks in so careful as though he's walking on eggshells, as though he's afraid stepping too hard will shatter the floor he walks on and brings down the walls of the house he was raised in.

( lies all of it was lies)

He walks into the living room and his parents glanced up at him. He sees the concern in their eyes. They might not be the best at noticing when he was upset. But in this case, a blind man could see the dried tear tracks on his cheeks, the wind-sweptness of his hair and the hollow dead

( dead dead dead a part of him laughs hysterically, manically, insanely)

look in his eyes.

He sits in the corner of the couch farthest away from them. Old habits die hard and he always kept his distance when they were working on ghost hunting equipment like the kind strewn across the coffee table now.

" Why did-why didn't-Why-," he stutters through this as they look at him with questions written on there face.

He takes a deep breath and hears Jazz in his ear saying, circular breathing Danny, you don't want to start hyperventilating.

He sees the worry grow on his par- on their faces.

" Why didn't you tell me?" He chokes out in a horse whisperer. Not even looking at them. His voice sounding as though he had just woken up from a long sleep, or just had a long cry.

"What are you talking about honey." his mother asks concerned and confused sounding. She always concerned these days though so it's nothing new, Danny thinks.

He breaks into a bitter chuckle. It's the straw that broke the camel's back, the pebble that starts an avalanche, or more accurately in Danny's case, the drop if the water in the dam of his emotions.

" What's going on Danny-boy?" Jack asks hesitantly. Wow, Danny thinks he must look really bad for him to pick up on it. If there was one thing Jack Fenton wasn't it was emotionally sensitive.

" What am I talking about?" Danny whispers questioningly. Looking at the floor like it holds the answers to the questions rattling around in his brain.

Then his blue eyes harden, they become cold, determined and look so very broken.

"What am I talking about?" he repeats looking them in the eyes.

He pretends he doesn't see his mother's instinctive flinch at the green swirling around in them, He pretends he doesn't see her moment of fear. He pretends he's not thinking about how Vlad jokingly called them his scary eyes; and how never not once, not even when he went to the future and met a Vlad who had seen him destroy the world had Vlad been scared of him for being a ghost.

"I'm talking about how your eyes are violet and his are brown," He says gesturing to Maddie then Jack. He says it so matter of factly, so clinically detached. He sees denial and realization grow in his mother's eyes

"I'm talking about how your hair is red and his is brown." His voice gets even more horse now and they can hear the songs he's choking back. His voice is a whisper: so quiet but it might as well be yelling in the stillness of the room.

The realization grows in Maddie's eyes with every word, but by god, she hopes she's wrong.

Maddie remembers when he got quiet. Right after the portal accident, she would find him sitting in there lab on the floor in front of the portal just staring at it. He never answered her when she asked what he was doing, just went upstairs and more often than not she didn't bother to pursue it. Thinking he was just a teen who needed his space or that he was interested in here work for once. She remembers the change in her loud boisterous boy who couldn't sit still for a moment and always had something to say. She regrets every time she let him walk away. She looks at him now sitting as still as the dead

( dead_dead__**dead**__)_

and for a moment the scientist in her wonders if he needs to breathe or if it's just instinct at this point.

"I'm talking about how I have his blue eyes and his silver black hair. I'm talking about how he spent years in the hospital with his body changing but my transformation was _seamless_." The last word is hissed and drawn out far longer than comfortable.

" Is Vlad my father?" He asked bluntly, but hesitantly and quiet, with all the betrayed innocence of a child whos been struck for the first time.

Jack is uncharacteristically silent, solemn almost. Maddie has glassy eyes.

"Yes," she whispers hoarsely, bitterly.

"I didn't know at first," she says hurriedly in a louder tone like that makes it better.

"But the older you get the more obvious it was;" she looks up at him.

"We're smart Danny, " she said gesturing to her and Jack.

" But you're intelligence ... we paled in comparison. I saw him every time you smirked. Every time your eyes, his eyes lit up when you learn something new. When at seven years old you could name every constellation above Amity. The older you got you just looked so much like him- acted so much like him. It was little things that added up. You were allergic to mango- so was Vlad, you had a birthmark on your left foot-so did he and then you turned 8. " tears are falling freely from her eyes down her cheeks. Danny is silent, head still bowed.

"I told him. " Danny's had popped up with an audible whoosh.

" You were doing a family tree project. You were supposed to see where your features came from, and you realized that you didn't look anything like us, not really, you had traits and features we couldn't explain. "

Danny looks at his shoes.

" You told me I took after my grandfather" he chokes out, it sounds like he ripped the words from his throat, he sounds betrayed. She nods.

" So I called him. After that it was obvious, and we couldn't take lying to him once we thought we knew the truth." Maddie's next words come out hesitatingly as though she needs to get her thoughts in order. She knows that everything she says here need to be made clear.

" He was angry, and he had every right to be. He yelled at me for a good two hours over the phone about " How dare I make this choice for him. " He drove all night, likely just to yell at us in person. " A bittersweet smile was on her face.

"He sat on the couch and virtually interrogated us for over an hour," she says looking over to his left. Almost like she's watching the scene play out in her mind.

" Then you walked in. " she laughs wetly

"You walked right up to him and demanded he play with you, you were a lonely little thing before you meet Tucker and Sam. Jazz was more than tired of playing spaceman at that point." Danny rubs his temple at this.

" I remember that vaguely," he says quietly, almost straining, like he could force the memory to be clearer if he just thought hard enough.

" He looked at you as though he had never seen a child before like you were this experiment he was examining the results of. He sat there entertaining you for hours. Even though he was dead tired, even though he probably hadn't slept in two days. He was kinder and softer than I had ever seen him." she seems as though she's staring at nothing, but her eyes tell a different story. One of the regretful times long past.

( In a hidden part of the ghost zone a ghost known as clockwork looks at the parade from above and all the twists and turns it could have taken. He sees a boy called Danny Masters who live in Wisconsin in the summer. He sees a man now corrupt, mad, and floating through space, he sees him happy sane, and content training his son as they playfully shoot ecto-blast at each other. He sees a beautiful future corrupted by selfishness, loneliness, envy, and lies.)

"He left when I told him it was bedtime, but not before demanding a DNA test. He was back the very next morning after you and Jazz had just left for school. He told us he would never forgive us for taking away his choice. He said not even he could take a child away from two parents who loved him and a good environment, a loving home, even if you did turn out to be his; which of course you were."

Sometimes Maddie wonders if this was an excuse, and it was Vlad's insecurity about parenting. She remembers a drunken college night and hearing Vlad offhandedly mention how he would never have kids so he couldn't screw them up as his father had him.

"He had every right to take everything from us, at the time Vlad was doing very well for himself and no judge in their right mind would appoint us as guardians over him; what with our jobs, but he did nothing. He asked only for emails on your life, your progress, your health, and pictures. It was the very least we owed him."

Danny laughed hysterically. He laughed till tears for streaming out of his eyes and he was gasping for breath that he didn't need.

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They were the laughs of a POW stumbling into base sobbing,

" I killed them all sarge. Every damn one"

They were the laughs at a funeral when you just don't know how to react.

They were the laughs of an adopted child on their 18th birthday when they find out there whole life has been a lie.

They were the laughs of Danny Fenton-Phantom-Masters. (He doesn't know anymore) They were the laughs of a sixteen-year-old boy who had gone through more and done more for this world than reasonable and was so past tired at this point.

* * *

Then Danny was quiet and still, and a strange sort of peace set over him.

" I never thought I would have anything in common with him. "Danny whispers in wonder. Looking out of the window at the cars zooming past.

" What do you mean Danny? " his mother asks softly, the way you would speak to a cornered animal.

Danny's quite, then he leans forward and looks them in the eyes.

" You have no clue of the things I've done or the things I've been through. You never noticed or even asked once you did know I had ghost powers. So you have no idea what it's like to fight and hate, truly hate the only person in the universe capable of understanding you fully. The only other one of your kinds." They start to stutter out a protest but he raises a hand and they stop.

" Don't say you do, you don't. You don't know what it's like to be fourteen, fourteen, and to have nightmares about your parents vivisecting you. Because they found out your secret. They found out you were a half-ghost, the very thing they despise most in this world. You don't know what it's like to have that nightmare come true."

Maddie and Jack flinch, ever since Danny came out as the ghost boy that day has haunted them, they remember pondering if the screams he gave off before he escaped were the memory of pain or if he was truly capable of feeling pain.

They didn't think it was cruel to them ghosts were merely animals. They pointedly don't think about how Danny hadn't come home for a week after that, how he woke up screaming from nightmares for months( how he still does) and how Sam, Tucker, Jazz, even Vlad had either radiated repressed anger or avoided them for months.

They especially don't think about how they didn't even inquire why, assuming it was teen angst and Vlad being Vlad.

(After all, if Danny had a dollar for every time his parents talked about how they would finish ripping apart that ghost boy molecule by molecule at the breakfast table he would be richer than Vlad. There's a reason he never ate family meals anymore.)

"You never had nightmares about them running experiments on you in the lab. The lab that's right below your bed. You don't know what it's like to be fourteen and being constant fear in your own home, because you see you're trying to control what might as well be a new limb; all the while trying to hide it. You don't know what it's like to be fourteen and think you're the only one of your kinds. You don't know what it's like to **die**." the last word is said with so many things bitterness, resignation, resentment.

And no matter how much he denies it, just a hint of longing. For if he were really, truly dead then at least he would belong somewhere not this half-life, half-death he lives now.

" And then, you find out that you're not alone. That there's someone like you, another halfa. But you get scared, because he hates your father, because he's trying to care about you, and it's just too much too soon. Because you're afraid,"

(afraid of yourself most of all, afraid of what you're capable of.)

" you're afraid of anyone trying to care. Afraid of the ulterior motives that you know he has. Afraid of being hurt and trusting people and you can't; because he is asking so much of you." Danny's almost yelling now and he can feel a cream building up in his throat, he shoves it down and presses on.

" So no matter how much you're tempted. No matter how many parts of you are screaming to take the hand that is offered to you. No matter how desperate you are at times, you _can't_." His voice breaks on the last word because it would take the fingers and toes of all of Amity to count the number of times he's thought about joining Vlad, mostly after being nearly killed by his parents.

"You just can't do it right now, because you're 14 and you're dead, and you're still trying to deal with that.

And to have someone there, even if there is someone who understands and cares it's just all too much. Because they want you to give up everything you have, everything you are clinging to by the skin of your teeth." Danny thinks about midnight panic attacks, about how that first year it felt like his life was falling to pieces. He thinks about the fact he probably has undiagnosed PTSD at 16. Then just like always, he shoves those thoughts in a box that he buried in the back of his mind. "So you fight him, the only person in the world who could help you, the only other person who has been through what you have and you become bitter enemies." Danny takes a deep breath and visibly tries to gather himself.

"Then he dies, we'll not really I guess. But he leaves in a way he can never come back from. And you're alone again. You alone and -" he can't make the tears stop because right now he's acknowledging things he hasn't even acknowledged to himself, let alone other people.

'and then-then you find out that he left you everything! Every mansion, every business, every cent, every stock and share and bond he owned. So you try to find out why. Why he did this, you were enemies, nothing more, right?

But then why did your bitter enemy who you hated, who you thought hated you, leave you everything.

Then you come across a box of letters all addressed to you. All explaining that _**you're his son**_,"

What Danny doesn't say is how the most recent ones were full of half-mad rambling a broken man. He does not say how the first of them was the one that left the tears tracts on his face, tears for a man he never knew He does t not express the grief he felt that all that was left of that man, that good man were words on a page; because that cannot be put into words. He does not say that he mourns the fact that the broken man is how the world remembers him.

" and in these letters, he's saying everything he did he thought was best for you that he wanted to give you your best shot so he left you alone. With people, he knew loved you. He left you alone to a happy normal life, and he apologizes." he says the last word almost unbelievingly with a chuckle at the end that was cut off by another sob.

" It was in one of the letters after we started fighting, one of the last somewhat sane sounding ones. He says he loves you and that no matter what you do no matter what you say, or what parents you love he will always love you. That even if he's not your dad, you'll always be his son." Danny stares at them with a look of such anger such betrayal in those red-rimmed eyes, and something else hidden there something that you should never see on a child.

A look most seen on soldiers of war who are just so tired and want to go home but can't because the battle may be won but the war's not over.

( will it ever be Danny thinks sometimes)

" So no," Danny stands up angrily.

" you don't know what I've been through. You don't know what it's like to be alone. To find out that you've been fighting your father since you were fourteen. I know now why he hated you" he said gesturing to Jack.

" I know why he wanted me to be his son. Why at first he always pulled every punch and critiqued my form when we fought. He knew he could destroy me any moment, he had decades of experience on me and there was never one fight we had that I didn't win because of sheer luck or a new power coming through that he had never seen. For so much of my life, he was more powerful than me and he always held back."Danny lets out a breath and it looks like the anger leaves him with it. His whole body droops, shoulders slumped and eyes downcast.

That's almost worse now Maddie thinks. She can deal with anger and feeling betrayed, but she has no idea how to even begin to tackle resigned sadness.

"It frustrated me to no end when he toyed with me. I felt like he thought I wasn't strong enough to really fight him." Danny looks them in the eyes now. Looks right at Maddiw with those baby blue eyes, Vlad's eyes.

"Now I know he just didn't want to hurt me. He wanted to teach me. Now I know he didn't become obsessed with the idea of me being his son. I was his son. And we had a connection that I will never have with anyone else living or dead. Because in the ghost world most ghosts have an elder ghost who takes them under there wing. Someone from the Ghost World to teach them our culture, our laws." Maddie takes in a sharp breath at the notion the ghost are civilized enough to have laws but make the smart decision to save those questions for another time. It also didn't escape Maddie or Jacks notice that Danny referred to himself as a ghost first and foremost but that's a story for another time.

"I didn't have anyone to teach me anything, because there was no other ghost-like me and because I lived in the human world. So in a way, he became my elder. Even if I didn't want him to be. He was my father and my elder. I understand now why my core settles when I'm around him. Why it felt almost physically sick when we fought. It was because my ghost half had known instinctively that he was my father, and I was his son, and it was wrong to fight him. I get it now." Danny says brokenly.

" And it's too late for me to tell him. It's too late." He looks up his eyes hard cold, but brimming with tears all the same.

" And for that, " he says just a quite as when he started.

"I can never forgive you."

He gets up and walks out the front door, they don't try to follow him.

* * *

Years later the irony won't be lost on Maddie that within the same hour of bemoaning the fact she had let him walk away all those times before she still didn't follow him this time. Years after she regrets this decision just the same.


End file.
